The Study of Indigenous Pyrodiversity Management Practices in Central California: An Eco-Archaeological Approach

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。在国家科学基金会的支持下，一个跨学科的学者团队正在研究加州印第安人采用景观管理实践的程度，特别是规定的燃烧，以提高当地经济植物和动物的生产力和多样性。关于加州狩猎采集者群体在全新世晚期和历史时期对当地环境的管理程度，土著学者、生态学家、民族志学者和考古学家之间存在着相当大的争论。虽然有些人认为，战略性地使用火和景观改造的规模，在其他地方发现的土著北美农业社会，其他人认为，规模和复杂的管理做法已大大夸大了最近的文献。 这场争论远不止是一场学术活动。 加州目前正在经历一场毁灭性的火灾（2008年发生了4000多起野火），这对财产损失、土地使用问题和州预算都有严重影响。 在正在进行的辩论中越来越多地提出的一个问题是，是否可以将土著景观实践的某些要素应用于加州的荒地管理，以增加本地物种的生物多样性，减少燃料负荷和毁灭性火灾的频率。 本研究报告的目的有两个。 第一个是制定一个综合的生态考古方法，通过时间的研究加州印第安景观管理的做法，特别注重规定的燃烧。这一方法将利用现场和场外的各种生态和考古数据。一个严格的方法将实施收集微植物学仍然（花粉，木炭，淀粉粒，植硅体），macrobotical样本，动物区系材料，文物，和楔形样本红木树桩，可用于构建火灾历史和植被演替，并评估当地狩猎采集社区的文化习俗，可能与火灾管理。 该方法还包括综合利用历史景观数据（照片，地图，连续航空图像），民族历史资料，以及现存的土著口述历史和口述传统。第二个目标是将这种方法应用于基罗斯特山谷，这是加州中部的阿尼奥努埃沃国家保护区内新指定的“国家文化保护区”。这项工作将由一个合作研究小组进行，该小组由来自加州公园和娱乐部（DPR）、Amah Mutsun Ohlone部落、加州大学伯克利分校、加州大学圣克鲁斯和旧金山弗朗西斯科河口研究所（SFEI）的土著学者、考古学家、牧场管理研究人员和火灾生态学家组成。该研究小组将评估一个火生物多样性收集器模型，该模型假设狩猎采集者通过煽动以频繁，小，低严重程度表面烧伤为特征的火灾制度来增强和创造生物多样性。在评估这个模型，团队成员将解决有关的性质，程度和影响的火灾管理实践在基罗斯特谷晚全新世和历史时期的研究问题，以及是否特定种类的做法可能会减少重大火灾的频率和严重程度。 这项研究的智力价值是更好地利用考古数据，在评估有关过去的火灾制度的问题，并确定狩猎采集社区创造的人为环境的程度。 这项研究的更广泛的影响涉及考古学家和生态学家可以对当代荒地和荒地-城市界面开放空间的研究和管理做出重要贡献。在Año努埃沃国家保护区工作时，项目研究人员不仅可以调查过去的原住民火灾做法，还可以与DPR资源专家和Amah Mutsun部落成员合作，利用生态考古研究的经验教训，开发管理当代景观的替代方法和观点。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).With support from the National Science Foundation, an inter-disciplinary team of scholars is examining the degree to which California Indians employed landscape management practices, particularly prescribed burning, to increase the productivity and diversity of economic plants and animals in local regions. There is considerable debate among Native scholars, ecologists, ethnographers, and archaeologists about the extent to which California hunter-gatherer groups managed local environments in the Late Holocene and Historic periods. While some argue for the strategic use of fire and landscape modifications on the scale of agrarian societies found elsewhere in indigenous North America, others believe the magnitude and complexity of management practices have been greatly over-exaggerated in the recent literature. This controversy is much more than an academic exercise. California is currently experiencing a devastating fire situation (more than 4000 wildfires in 2008), with grave implications for property loss, land use issues, and the state's budget. A question that is increasingly raised in the on-going debate is whether some elements of indigenous landscape practices might be applied to the management of wildlands in California to increase the biodiversity of native species and to decrease fuel loads and the frequency of devastating firestorms. The purposes of this study are twofold. The first is to develop an integrated eco-archaeological approach for the study of California Indian landscape management practices through time, with particular focus on prescribed burning. This approach will employ various types of ecological and archaeological data from both on-site and off-site contexts. A rigorous methodology will be implemented to collect microbotanical remains (pollen, charcoal, starch grains, phytoliths), macrobotanical samples, faunal materials, artifacts, and wedge samples from redwood stumps that can be used to construct fire histories and vegetation successions, and to evaluate cultural practices among local hunter-gatherer communities that might be associated with fire management. The approach also includes the integrated use of historic landscape data (photographs, maps, sequential aerial imagery), ethnohistorical sources, and extant Native oral histories and oral traditions. The second goal is to apply this approach in the Quiroste Valley, a newly designated "State Cultural Preserve" in the Año Nuevo State Reserve in Central California. The work will be undertaken by a collaborative research team comprised of Native scholars, archaeologists, range management researchers, and fire ecologists from the California Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), the Amah Mutsun Ohlone Tribe, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI). The research team will evaluate a pyrodiversity collector model which hypothesizes that hunter-gatherers enhanced and created biodiversity by instigating fire regimes characterized by frequent, small, low severity surface burns. In evaluating this model, team members will address research questions concerning the nature, extent, and implications of fire management practices in the Quiroste Valley during Late Holocene and Historic times, and whether specific kinds of practices may have curtailed the frequency and severity of major firestorms. The intellectual merits of this study are to make better use of archaeological data in evaluating questions concerning past fire regimes and to determine the degree to which hunter-gatherer communities created anthropogenic environments. The broader impacts of the study involve the important contributions that archaeologists and ecologists can make to the study and management of contemporary wildlands and open spaces in the wildland-urban interface. In working at Año Nuevo State Reserve, project researchers are ideally situated to not only investigate past Native fire practices, but to collaborate with DPR resource specialists and Amah Mutsun tribal members in developing alternative methods and perspectives for managing contemporary landscapes using lessons derived from the eco-archaeological research.